Explicit strategy instruction combined with student-directed self-regulation in conjunction with cognitive strategies has proven effective in supporting low-achieving students' reading comprehension. Experts have extended 1 such approach, self-regulated strategy development (SRSD) for the expository reading comprehension Think before reading,…

The authors examined how motivational and cognitive variables predict reading comprehension, and whether each predictor variable adds unique explanatory power when statistically controlling for the others. Fourth-grade students (N = 205) completed measures of reading comprehension in September and December of the same year, and measures of…

Charter school administrators weathered start-up woes, among them challenging students with unmet needs, verbal assaults, dwindling student enrollment, and a first-year budget deficit exceeding $200,000 to implement a reading improvement strategy that holds promise for helping at-risk students read better, a point particularly underscored…

Investigates the effectiveness of explicit instruction in think aloud as a means to promote elementary students' comprehension monitoring abilities. Concludes that both think-aloud (TA) and a directed reading-thinking activity (DRTA) strategies are effective but that additional research is needed to determine their relative effectiveness. (SR)

A study investigated the effects of systematically varying the vocabulary-related instructions that students receive before reading to further understanding of the vocabulary/comprehension relationship. Subjects were 299 students from fifth- or fourth/fifth-grade classrooms, who participated in 6 different conditions which included reading…

Examines background knowledge and strategy knowledge from a broad view to better understand how they contribute to elementary-age students' reading comprehension of both narrative and expository texts. Indicates that background knowledge specific to the content of the text being read begins to diminish in importance at about grade 4, when strategy…

Explores whether fourth-grade students who were taught specific research-based strategies using a transactional strategies instruction approach would improve in comprehension achievement and would be more engaged during reading. Notes that the treatment group was taught predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing strategies; and the…

Investigates the effect of informing remedial readers that strategy use (such as looking for the main idea) improves performance on their self-efficacy and comprehension skills. Finds increased self-efficacy and comprehension skills, and suggests that remedial readers need multiple sources of strategy value information. (RS)

Examines the effect of training fourth-grade children to use the regulation strategy of rereading as a means of answering questions about previously read text. Finds that subjects trained in the rereading strategy used the strategy more often and were more likely to produce correct responses than were control subjects. (RS)

Evaluates the relative importance of graphic and contextual information in word recognition, as well as the relative importance of several specific sources of contextual information (lexical, semantic, syntactic, discourse) among second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade students. Finds that students use more graphic than contextual information at target…

A study investigated the development of metacognitive strategy instruction on standardized reading comprehension measures with fourth grade students. Forty-one subjects were assigned to one of three criterion reading groups, based on pretest scores using the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) and the Wide Range Achievement Test: (1)…

Reports a study indicating that students who received instructions to induce mental imagery identified both explicit and implicit inconsistencies in text significantly more often than did those in a control group, supporting the use of mental imagery as a comprehension-monitoring strategy. (HTH)

To improve the inferential comprehension of good and poor fourth-grade readers (n=40), teachers provided instruction in (1) drawing inferences between new and existing knowledge, (2) discussing, prior to reading, events similar to the story, and (3) providing inferential questions to discuss after reading. (Author/PN)

Research on text organization has demonstrated that reading is responsive to the number and complexity of idea units or propositions in a text, and that the capacity of children to recall information is responsive to the relative importance of the idea units. A study was undertaken to examine an extension of these propositions: namely, that…

Describes a technique that helped less-able fourth grade readers develop a better understanding of story parts and how they fit together. Explains that the technique also improved reading comprehension. (FL)